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On 10th August I am cycling to Brighton, I'm swimming the Great London Swim on August 31st and on the 6th October I'll be running The Royal Parks Half Marathon. Training is well under way and I would love your support to reach my target!

I am hoping to raise at least £500 for The Children's Trust, specifically their Brain Injury Rehab centre in Tadworth.

This charity provides specialist residential rehabilitation to children with brain damage and supports them to eventually move back home and live with their families. Since beginning the work I do with people with brain damage I have seen how devastating such an injury can be and how it could easily happen to you or me.

For a child to have to experience this and be robbed of living a typical life is an absolute tragedy and with very little rehabilitation offered by the NHS the work The Children's Trust does is outstanding. They rely on funding from donations by people like you and they would not be able to support as many kids as they do without it. Thankfully with the right rehab and support children can compensate and regain some of their cognitive abilities after brain damage.

Even if you're not doing this for me guys, please, just do it for the kids.

 

I came across this a few months ago and thought it captured the feelings of families with a disabled child. It puts a lot in perspective....

 

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

By Emily Perl Kingsley.